Heroic Bus Driver Fearlessly Saves All the Kids on Her Bus After It Bursts Into Flames

Renita Smith, a school bus driver in College Park, Maryland had started what she thought was a normal shift, dropping kids off at their homes after classes ended. But when disaster struck, she took action, saving the lives of 20 small children and earning a reputation as a hero, ABC News reports.

Smith was on her third stop of the day when she noticed her dashboard brake light had turned on. Then, she started to smell something burning. At first, she thought she'd just have to call for a backup bus, so she pulled over to radio the depot. "By the time I got the mic, one of my little ones said, 'No, Ms. Bus Driver, it's fire!'" she told WUSA-TV. She looked in her rearview mirror and, sure enough, she saw flames.

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Then, Smith went into what she called "mommy mode." She took her seatbelt off, jumped out of her seat, and started to get all the children off the bus. She risked her life to make sure "every last body" was accounted for on the bus, she told CNN. As the fire got bigger, she went back in, doing one final check of every single seat to make sure all 20 children were off the bus. As she got to the last step to get off the bus, the vehicle went up in smoke.

Smith said she relied on her instincts as a mother of two when she took action. "I didn't see other people's children on that bus. I saw my own children," she told CNN. "I'm a mom, so I just did what a mom would do. And I got my babies off the bus."

After the kids were safe, everyone went in for a tearful, grateful group hug. The cause of the fire is still unknown, but it apparently started from one of the rear wheels and then spread to the rest of the bus. Smith told WUSA-TV that she didn't even stop to think of what she did until later, when she saw footage of the fire. Now, she can't stop thinking about the horror that could have happened, and those thoughts keep her up at night.

"My biggest reward is my babies are safe," Smith told WRIC-TV, "because whenever I'm driving any school, they're my children until I drop them to their biological parents."